2011 October Horror Movie Challenge Movie 47: Pontypool

This is one of those movies that horror fans raved about so much after it came out, and everyone was telling me "OMG you HAVE to watch Pontypool!!!!!" and I was thinking "WTF does "Pontypool" mean?" I waited almost two years to finally get around to watching this, and I plugged my ears and ran away screaming anytime someone tried to spoil the movie for me, so I really had no idea what to expect. Having said all that, this movie blew me away. It isn't perfect, it has a few glaring flaws, but it's so entertaining and so different and so creative that it absolutely kicked ass and I loved it in spite of whatever flaws it may have had.

For the record, "Pontypool" is the name of a small town in Canada, and the small-town radio host (who used to be a big-time star and now resents working in a tiny town where he has to recite school closings and interview members of the community theater on air) is the star of this movie, along with his boss at the radio station, and a girl who answers phones and does fact-checking for the station. This three-person crew make up the bulk of the action in the movie, as things start to go very wrong in their isolated small town, on the same day a huge blizzard blows in, making their small town even more isolated from the rest of the world. These three actors rock HARD and manage to make the movie enthralling and never boring (which is a huge feat for a movie that takes place almost entirely within one small room). As the day drags on and they get more and more news reports of the strange and terrifying happenings in their town, they start to come unglued (which most people would do in such a situation, so it is totally believable, and we've come to like these characters, so it's hard to watch them fall apart like this). They have no ides what's going on at first, and watching them decipher the clues and figure out how to survive is riveting. This is a movie that takes a relatively old idea and breathes new life into it, making the old seem new again. I won't spoil it for you, so there's no need to plug your ears and run away screaming, but you should run to the video store now and buy or rent this movie so you can watch it, because it's THAT good.